That’s the sort of thing that I’d want to have (although I think I’d prefer an adapter from somewhere like plussound) I have been trying to unify all of my cables to 4.4mm as it’s the connection that I like the most. I don’t want to go back to one of the manufacturers that does modular systems (at least the ones I’ve seen/tried) as I’ve personally noticed a pretty sizeable sound difference in favour of cables from forza and plussound.
I agree the usecase ia super niche, specially when at this price you can get a cable.
I wonder how will be the synergy with the KZ CRN
ifi dropped their “air” series of even cheaper amp/dac/bluetooth receiver/phono products. kinda cool i guess.
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it seems there are two more Zen Air products coming in May. I Googling to see if I could find anything quick to read about what the differences are between the new Air vs non-Air models and WhatHiFI says a Zen Air CAN and Air Zen Phono are expected in May.
the biggest and most notable difference is that the Zen Air drop the balanced 4.4mm Pentacon connector. it also swaps out some of the metal for a thermoplastic polymer that isn’t brittle and will stand up to any shocking experiences…like falls, not electrical. the Air models don’t have the newer GMT clock, but do include one of iFi’s previous GMT clocks, has the XMOS firmware, PCM 32bit / 384kHz, supports DXD and DSD 64, 128 and 255, but it drops the NMQA decoding for rendering instead.
the picture for the Air CAN looks the same as the regular CAN, including the 4.4mm Pentacon port…so I’m curious about what corners were cut, aside from the metal casing, to get this price point.
pricing is $130 USD / each, for all 4.
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The can isn’t balanced 4.4 it’s their “s-balanced” thing but not true balanced. Also only 1.2w@32ohm so like half the power. Odd choice.
Hadn’t seen anything here so: Burson lauched the Timekeeper GT. Interestingly is two monoblocks, in contrast with the integrated amp approach from the original Timekeeper. Also interesting that they use a Noctua fan to cool things, something I am highly in favor of and thinks more companies should consider (not necessarily a Noctua, but some low RPM fan). 3.4k for the pair (starter price, maybe?
Also, there is already a video from Thomas Stereo:
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Apparently Crin wasn’t made aware of this… but yup, turns out it’s true
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i want those soooooo bad. but priorities…
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Lulz that is cray… maybe he’ll slow down on the collabs.
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I can’t say that I’m not surprised about this whole KZ situation. I’ve always had my doubts with their sets having so many drivers in them but always remaining so cheap. I just chalked it up to good ol’ Chi-Fi magic … But damn. I wonder what’s going to happen moving forward and if people will start cracking open more Chi-Fi sets in the higher price brackets.
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Kind of makes you question the whole IEM industry…
I don’t know if everyone can agree, but the headphone industry in general severely lacks of objective studies and tests (I am not talking about frequency graphs… we have enough of those). Personally, I don’t think enough things are being questioned and tested objectively. We just sort of believe what the marketing says, perhaps echo that marketing or put our own take of the marketing.
For example, speakers are a whole different topic. A lot of studies and objective tests are present in the speaker industry.
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@voja My thoughts exactly. It truly does make me question the entire IEM market. These things are so god damn expensive, sometimes hard to get your hands on and the last thing you want to do is start tinkering around with them, inside with all the different components. We definitely need some more breakdowns and objective analysis of what’s going on.
It’s so silly … I’m thinking back on it now and I remember seeing KZ just PUMP out so many sets in a year and wonder how the hell they achieve this. Looks like we have our answer.
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That’s fascinating. I feel like even at a base enthusiast level, there’s more FR data than anything attempted with speakers. Speakers have a lot of variables (room) that are massive. But, often a consumer only gets a freq taket and sensitivity figure which are both non-standardized and troubled. Personal audio devices are caving to consumer demands for data increasingly. Which can be used for good and evil.
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Are people really really that sucked into driver config as a selling point? I guess if you aren’t really into this hobby I can see it with the idea of more + different being better, but like, I’d much rather just have a mfg focus on making something sound good rather than trying to integrate more or different drivers for the hell of it (in this case apparently not even doing that and just slapping them in there only for looks lol, but if that’s true or not isn’t clear atm)
I don’t know, I think it’s about similarly prominent, but I think the reason you see more testing and questioning in the iem market is because there generally just needs to be. There’s a lot more sketchy companies and products that pop up every day in the iem segment than you see in the headphone side of things imo. Seems like it’s much easier for a company to get going in the iem market vs the harder to enter headphone side of things. Also seems like it’s also a lot easier to pump out stuff in the iem market successfully vs the headphone side of things as well
Generally most headphones people buy end up being from larger more tried and true headphone makers (likely because it seems like they are mostly the only option a fair amount of the time), whereas there’s a ton more overall mfg/brands of iems to choose from, with most being much less established than the headphone brands that are popular. I think there’s just a higher chance of being burned in the iem market than headphones, and the lack of the markets maturity might contribute to that
From what I’ve seen, iem buyers also seem much more willing to jump on whatever new train approaches regardless of mfg or product vs the headphone side of things (although it does absolutely happen on both sides, but I do feel like if there’s a new product from a new unestablished company, the headphone market is generally less likely to give it a shot than the iem market is), so to me, the combination of the wider potential range of sketchy options + the higher willingness to go into things blindly just ends up leading the iem community to be more immediately skeptical/critical out of necessity, vs on the headphone side of things where that’s really not as big of a problem imo. For why this is I’m not sure, potentially just due to the fact that it’s a less mature and more rapidly developing market, along with it’s general tendency to cater more toward budget as well, idk, not sure.
But that’s more my outsider take here, since I mainly focus more on headphones and am not really involved or as interested in the iem market myself, it’s more just what I feel like I’ve observed around me. The iem market as a whole just largely seems like more of a gamble, so the community is largely more skeptical in response to that, and it’s not as prominent in the headphone market because there’s just less things to be skeptical of (since there’s less general options, and the most commonly prominent options have already been looked into already, people already know what to expect and it’s more easily apparent when those expectations are broken)
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To be honest, I am surprised. It seems so weird that they even go through the trouble of adding drivers, but just not connecting them. I guess connecting the drivers and making it sound somewhat ok is even more expensive than the actual driver (even in such a high volume low cost market).
On the other hand it seems funny to me: I bought the non-pro ZEX and I didn’t understand what the “electrostatic” driver was doing. I couldn’t hear it. I commented as much in this or another forum even and got replies agreeing with me. I just chalked it off to a terrible driver, but just not connecting it, is an unexpected level of scam.
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I wouldn’t say “sucked in”, but driver configuration is definitely part of my buying decision and I don’t see the issue with that. I think it is actually the opposite of what you are saying: If I am new to the hobby, I just want something that sounds good. But once I got one or two good sounding IEMs, I want to explore the capabilities of different technologies and experience their characteristics to see what my personal likes and dislikes are and find not a good - but the perfect IEM for my specific tastes.
It is less about driver count, but e.g. when I bought the 7hz timeless big part of that was a leap of faith and knowing that even if I dislike it, I get the experience of hearing what a planar sounds like… and it is very different from a dynamic driver. Another example: I haven’t bought it or experienced it (maybe one day) but you hear all that rave about STAX headphones…
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As Akros (Tony) found out the est is not audible.
So how goes the saying? Something like:
Don’t assume malice when you can attribute incompetence.
For context:
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Interesting to see in the first video, that the electrec driver was the loudest in the >10khz region, which is what I expected/hoped for. But I didn’t get that, thanks to the -48db as Akros explains.
To be fair: I just ordered the ZEX based on electrec marketing, low price and HBB recommendation. I didn’t even look at the graph (if I had, I wouldn’t have ordered it).
Amazing reply from you, as usual. Thank you!
Actually, I was referring to both headphones and IEMs, I just forgot to write “IEMs”.
If you think about the number of different tests that are being done for speakers compared to the number of tests done for headphones/IEMs (frequency response is just about the only one that pops up in my mind right now), you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
Personally, I have never visited Audio Science Review, but I have to respect for the number of tests being done for speakers. For example, if you are buying a set of studio monitors, you can get a pretty good idea of whether they fulfill your requirements or not based on the FR + the waterfall graphs.
I don’t know whether the same sort of tests can be done with IEMs and headphones, but I feel that many will buy a headphone/IEM just based on some words and recommendations (and, of course, listening to the item in person).